One of Minyoung Kim’s greatest strengths lies in her ability to craft narratives – painting unique stories that unfold over time. In each painting, Kim plays with a myriad of recurring emblems and motifs that explore the uncertainty of emotional experience and draw the viewer in to a world of playful possibility.

We are confronted with inanimate objects humanised with inquisitive eyes and fruits illustrated with cartoon faces. These interventions explore ideas around the surreal and uncanny – themes that underline Kim’s larger practice. Cats feature throughout the works and are often used to subvert or accelerate dangerous, precarious situations whether it is a cat valiantly holding on to a palm tree in a storm, or haunting feline eyes reflecting on a sharp knife’s edge. The cats tap into something very human in us, our anxieties, fears and hopes. By placing them in a fictitious world, Kim suggests there are real-life consequences.